I probably handled this situation immaturely, but it sure felt good. What do you think?

First a little context. I live in a house that is divided into four apartments, with a shared parking area in the back. The driveway serves my house and an identical house next door. My city has insane parking laws, and to park on the street without getting a ticket you need a permit (which I don't have because I park in the back).

Today I came home to find a big U-Haul truck blocking my driveway. I pulled up and rolled down my window to ask the guy if he could move it. Before I could say a word he says this: "I'm not fucking moving it". Before I go any further, I want to make sure that I make it clear that this guy is big. Probably about my height (6'2), but he looks like he weighs about 270 lbs. Fat, but tough looking (shaved head, kind of looked like a professional wrestler from the '80s).

Now, if he had said "hey, we're just finishing it up, can you park on the street for a bit" or "I'm really sorry, but nothing inside is tied down yet, if we move it it'll make a huge mess" I would have let it slide. But this guy was just being a prick because he knew he could probably beat me up. So we shouted at each other for a minute before I drove away and parked on the street.

Now, maybe the mature thing to do would have been just to leave at that. But I didn't. It's probably because just dropping it is the sort of thing I would have done in middle school when a bully gave me shit. And I never liked the way I felt afterwards when that happened. So anyway, I parked my car and started walking home, stopping to pick up a beer bottle and put it in my back pocket. I walked up to the guy and said something along the line of "You've got a bad fucking attitude. You don't just block someone's driveway and then tell them you're not going to move, like a prick", and within about a minute of back and forth shouting this guy starts coming at me. So I pull the beer bottle out of my pocket and cock my arm. He stopped and started yelling about what a pussy I am to use a fucking bottle, and how I should fight him like a man. By this time my roommates had rushed out of the house to back me up, and people were stopping on the street. So I just said 'You've got an hour to move it or I'm calling the cops' and walked into my house.

Almost everything I've been taught says that I handled this immaturely, and that I should have been a bigger man and not escalated things. But you know what? Handling it this way sure felt a lot better. What do you think?

TL;DR: I picked a fight with a guy a lot bigger than me (while holding a weapon) because he was trying to bully me. Did I handle this immaturely?

EDIT: The truck was gone within an hour.

EDIT 2: I didn't post this to defend my actions. I'm just saying that, right or wrong, it felt good to stand up for myself against someone who probably wasn't used to being stood up to. (I'm assuming he wasn't used to people standing up to him because of his size, and because he was willing to start off our conversation so disrespectfully, as if he had never had to deal with the consequences of being a dick before.)

EDIT 3: I'm fantasizing about one day being nominated for the supreme court and this thread being debated at my confirmation hearings in the senate.

It's been said, but: if I've got to fight someone, I'm in it to win. It's nt a game, and I don't owe that guy anything. It's better to avoid fair fights because if you fight fair, the other guy has a better chance of winning. You have an advantage, you take it.

The situation wasn't fair. The extra 100 pounds the guy was carrying are a great advantage and he's using it as a weapon. The big guy KNOWS he's going into this fight with an advantage. Therefore the fight is already unfair. All the man did was level the playing field a bit.

wtf else would it be for? I didn't make a fucked up comment like others who deserve to be downvoted (but get upvoted because their comment was somuch more "the taste".. is this reddit or 4chan?). I don't want to complain! I want to understand. Help me understand.

Thats exactly what I'm talking about. The fewest play fair in this little game. I guess I shouldn't have to mention the coincidence of this discussion with the overall fairness of reddits users (and the whole world, if you like to think epic). In the real world I have understood, fairness is not humans best sport. But when we play games where it's all about fun and virtual respect, we could easily play fair, couldn't we?

Anyway, thanks you all have cleared the things up for me on this thread.

I think the problem is that you assumed that MrSpaceYeti suggested fighting dirty whereas he probably meant it as getting yourself into a situation where you have at best a 50:50 chance of winning would be a mistake. The downvotes were for your accusatory comments against the hivemind.

A similar thing happened to me, except I'm a woman, and the person with the truck was a woman. I said,"Hey that truck is in my way!" almost in tears ('cuz I was pregnant and it was hot out) and the woman apologized up and down and blamed herself for being foolish.

Later, in my apartment, I felt like an asshole for being so nasty, and when I encountered her again later, I apologized up and down and blamed myself.

Then we both blamed ourselves, shared some cookies and became friends.

You got lucky. I stopped a guy from beating up a girl in an alley; he was beating her in the face with his fists. He was bigger than me, had prison tats and was using some prison moves that were unnerving, but I still managed to stop him, as I used to box and knew how to handle myself--or so I thought. The guy gave up and just bitched and cursed me. I felt like I was all that...until his friend, out of my line of sight, got out of a car some 100 feet away, came up behind me and hit me across the side of my head with a 2x4 (a witness told me this later--I was out cold). Oh, and the girl I saved? A friend tells me (I was knocked out), that the girl delivered a coup de grace with a kick to my face while I was out. Fucking cunt. I was lucky to not have brain damage or get knifed. Even the cops were unsympathetic. They told me I deserved it. In a way, I agree.

BTW, a bottle won't stop anyone from kicking your ass who is used to fighting. He was just a blow-hard. Anyone else is likely to take it away and use it on you.

Moral of the story: Never get involved in a domestic. In my defense, it looked like a rape/mugging it was so vicious.

Anyway, once you have kids your ego goes away and self-preservation starts to be more important in a way that you are surprisingly okay with. I can walk away from anything now no matter how embarrassing. And failing that, I can sucker punch with the best of them.

Don't worry, Karma will get that bitch. If she has the nerve to kick someone who was helping her then she obviously has battered woman's syndrome. It's a sad thing, but she is going back to an abusive situation.

It would've made sense. But at that point I wasn't thinking logically. All I was thinking was 'This guy comes to my house, and treats me that disrespectfully? It must be because he doesn't think I have the balls to stand up to him'.

Not me. I'd have parked asked him again to move and said I gotta pull in soon or I'll be risking getting a fine when you finish up could you knock on my door to let me know. if he didn't I'd have reported his liscence plate numbers to the company he works for and let them know he was a rude dickhead and blocked my driveway and refused to move risking me a fine.

Man, that must have felt satisfying. I met a guy with the exact same attitude a while back, but I had to play the submissive because this douche was a customs officer and I a foreign national trying to enter on a work visa. Fuck those guys.

So not true! Go to the US, and the customs guys are all "Open your bag", "why are you visiting?", "what's your job?"- fair enough all those questions, but given how American manners are generally so good, not being called "sir" and having orders barked at you without "please" or "thank you" or any form of civility is actually pretty intimidating.

Coming back to the UK, the situation was so different- the customs people seemed so apologetic and friendly to non UK residents it made them seem almost amateurish- although, lets face it, they conducted similar searches and asked similar questions.

I love the US, but your law enforcement/customs people are the most graceless, ill-mannered cunts on the face of the earth.

Really? I'm a brit, but I've heard from visiting friend that our customs guys (well, our immigration people in particular) aren't particularly friendly to non EU people. No argument on the american front though. The american passport control people are generally as rude and obnoxious as other americans are not.

Calling the landlord or the police would have netted more gains. Instead he looked like a douchebag with a beer bottle in his back pocket. He could have gotten them towed or ticketed, but he really wanted to prove to those high school bullies that he was a tough guy now.

If you had used it I would say it was immature. The way you handled it was slightly immature too, but it sounds like it did the same things as if you'd handled it other ways. Sure it may have made this guy a little angry, but who cares? He was being a dick anyway.

Good man. It was good that you stood up for yourself, and no one likes getting pushed around. But putting yourself in that situation might not have been the best course of action. What if he still came at you? What if he sent you to the hospital, or what if, in the heat of the moment, you used "self defense" with that bottle and sent him there? It just isn't worth the trouble. The best thing to do, after the jerk immediately said he wasn't fucking moving it, would be to park illegally in plain sight (if possible and not in his way, somewhere you can keep an eye on it too) so he can actually see what he is causing. And then get out and offer to help them move their things to speed up the process, explaining that you need to get your car in asap and the sooner they finish, the better. I am always one to kill people with kindness and if that doesn't put him in his place, then karma will.

If I feel threatened by someone outside my house blocking my home, I would pick up a weapon of some kind as well. And if he started coming at me, I'd pull the weapon out. And if he still came at me, I'd use it. And with the number of people as witnesses, I'm sure you'd have people to agree that it was in self-defense.

If he had handled the situation like an adult, he wouldn't have gotten into a heated argument with that person. In the real world, people do not pocket weapons when they approach rude people. If that was the case, I would bring a machete to learn those stupid, slow old people at the grocery store. But I don't do that. I deal with it, like an adult.

He never threatened him, he was just said he wasn't moving his truck. If he said "I am going to beat the shit out of you because I do not want to move my truck", I would agree, but the OP did not say that happened. Don't get me wrong, the mover is an asshole, but because someone is an asshole you shouldn't think that bringing a weapon into the mix would make things better.

I might have made this statistic up, but I'm pretty sure I've heard that when someone who brings a weapon into a fight and is inexperienced with using it, more often than not will become injured by that weapon rather than the opponent. Just sayin'.

FUck that. Once a drunk guy was misbehaving and trying to mess with a few friends of mine (all girls). I tried to talk it through but he was obstinate. I went outside and got a fuckin' tree trunk. Fuck that, when i get pissed i just don't care. Maturity my ass, you did good... like superman.

I think you might have regretted it later if there had actually been a fight. Or at least, I know I would. More trouble than it's worth, really. Although I wouldn't have a problem with calling the cops immediately and saying that the guy is blocking my drive and refuses to move.

okay, wtf was so immature about that? Your my hero, I would fucked that guy up with that bottle. People use guns, knives and other shit they find on the street. This is real life kid, not some movie you saw or made up in your mind. Dog eat dog. That was not immature, but you standing up for yourself. "Fight like a man", why doesn't that guy act like a man first.

I think no matter how you would have handled that situation you'd still be reflecting on how you could have done it differently and beating yourself over about.

That being said, I don't think you escalated anything. You just stood your ground and had contingencies in place if he decided to escalate things which he looked mighty likely to do given his initial response.

You know who else has contingencies and doesn't back down to punks? Batman.

You feel like shit because you weren't able to handle the situation correctly when it first presented itself. Or rather, you feel like shit because you had to resort to something you weren't comfortable with to resolve the situation, because you weren't able to handle the situation correctly when it first presented itself.

Think about the ways things could have gone better for everyone, then try to do that next time.

What if he got the weapon off you? There is another (parallel) universe not far from this one where you bled to death on the road in front of your home, having had your throat slashed open by a broken bottle.

I dunno what you consider immature, but I think you handled it very maturely. Sure, brandishing a weapon isn't the most sensible thing to do, but I bet things wouldn't have ended as well - had you not had it. Not only that, but you were only being assertive.

I was expecting you to have thrown the bottle at his windshield or something.

Once, in high school, I was walking down a hall with a couple of folks, including one kid I didn't really know who thought it was hilarious to kick me repeatedly (lightly) in the shins. Told him to stop. No dice. He was playing a DS, though, and not really paying a lot of attention to where he was going. So I deliberately fell slightly behind the group, wound up and delivered a hard knee-level kick. He buckled, almost fell down -- his DS probably would've hit if he had -- spun around with this look of fury as I took one big step back and said, "Now we're even."

I dropped my daughter off yesterday morning and then drove home again to find someone in my parking space. My bus to work was in 30 minutes. I sat in my car thinking for about ten minutes - i would have to park in the multistorey car park for the whole day at a ridiculous rate or risk getting towed by parking somewhere I shouldn't, just because some idiot had taken my space.

In the end I parked somewhere that wasn't really a parking space but it was the best I could find and then I left a note on the driver's windscreen, saying 'Thank you for never parking in my space again'. I was so angry I felt like keying that fucking car. But I'm glad I stayed calm and rose above it.

I hate when people cut you off with rudeness. Like when you don't even say anything. I was walking down a concourse at a hockey game. It was already a bitch to walk, and this group of douchebags thought it was appropriate to just stand in the middle and jaw jack. I got pinned behind a group and I was about to ask this guy if he would move and he looked at me with that "I'm a pompous asshole" look and said "go around." I lowered a shoulder and slammed into this group and shoved everyone out of the way. I knocked two guys over and was afraid that I was going to get my shit rocked by these guys until the crowd around me started cheering... I love sporting event crowds.

Now all you've done is ensure that you have an ongoing conflict with whoever moved next door and established the precedent that conflicts should be solved with violence.

When U-Haul guy shows up to a party next door in 3 months and is super loud, are you going to show up with a baseball bat? What about when U-Haul is over there with 4 of his friends and want to start trouble.

Unless I am misreading why a U-Haul was in your driveway, you've just established tough guy rules for dealing with all kinds of trouble, opposed to moderation.

I think of scenarios the way you do. It is much easier to take the high road and suffer the inconvenience, than to pick a battle that can linger. And the way I see it, people move into buildings, and that is always a fucking hassle. The people who are moving or helping aren't happy about it either, but it is temporary. Move on, park on the street, meet your new neighbors and don't burn bridges the first day.

If everyone pussies out, everyone loses to oversized assholes. Someone has to fucking standup, or we all lose. That said, I grant that not all conflict need be direct, and the cops may have been a safer bet.

There isn't a lot of real thought in any of what you relate in your story. It's all emotional reaction - and at high stress levels there isn't much more than the fight-or-flight reaction of the amygdala in your brain. What do I think? I think you need to learn how to take a deep breath, calm down, and relate to other people in a cooler and saner way.

It sounds like you entered the situation with a bad mood. You definitely should have just asked how long there were going to be and then moved the car later. Moving is a royal bitch, people should be accommodating.

Some of us have to be employed and useful, rather than thinking of all the ways in which we can engage in personal combat. Sure, this was a touch dumb and flat out risky, but not everyone is set to deal with aggressive stupidity.

Suggesting to call the police does not make you a tough guy. Bringing a bottle to a situation where he could have either rolled with it or called the authorities, make the OP the real tough guy. Nothing that he described escalated to the point of violence until he walked back with the bottle. He is a pussy.